


The Worth of Water

by shimotsuki



Category: Sharing Knife - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-26
Updated: 2012-08-26
Packaged: 2017-11-12 22:07:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/496142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shimotsuki/pseuds/shimotsuki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Berry considers what the river found in Alder, and what it found in Whit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Worth of Water

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [katyhasclogs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/katyhasclogs/pseuds/katyhasclogs) in the [Bujold_Ficathon_2012](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Bujold_Ficathon_2012) collection. 



Berry poked at the sea foam with one bare toe. The tiny bubbles popped and spat. She grinned. They _tickled_.

“It’s cold!” Yelping, Whit ran backward up the wet slope of sand just ahead of the next wave. He nearly overbalanced, and windmilled his arms to recover. As one hand held his shoes and the other held hers, it was quite a sight. She grinned again, and Whit, generous enough with his humor not to mind when the joke was on him, grinned back.

There wasn’t a single boat anywhere in sight—not even the fishing boat that had brought them all down to the sea. Berry figured this meant she didn’t have to be boat boss just now. 

That thought lightened the load on her shoulders, some.

She didn’t know if that load was lighter or heavier than it had been a few weeks ago. At least now she knew what had happened to Papa and Buckthorn. 

And Alder. 

So it was over, this quest that everyone back home except Bo had said would be impossible for a girl and her little brother to see through to the end. She had even steered her whole patchwork flatboat crew down to Graymouth, cargo intact. Right now, Hawthorn seemed happy enough, splashing in the foam, with Barr and Remo looking on like they wished they weren’t too dignified to jump right in themselves. Fawn and Dag had gone walking off down the shore. Everyone was safe. Nobody needed her to set any course, to make any decisions. 

The sea stretched out all around, further than she could rightly imagine, in every direction except the way they had come. 

Berry breathed in the damp, salty air and walked on, just above where the waves curled in.

“I s’pose you’ve seen the sea a dozen times before.” Whit’s smile had a wry twist, like maybe he was apologizing for his newness here.

“Nope,” she said, smiling back. “It’s my first time here, too. We never came down past Graymouth, with Papa.”

“Sure is big,” said Whit.

Maybe that observation wasn’t very original, but Whit was right. The sea was bigger than everything in the wide green world. Bigger than river bandits, or murder, or betrayal. Bigger even than the kind of justice that had no choice but to leave more people dead in its wake.

The Grace was big, too, Berry supposed, in its own way. Big enough to carry Alder away from home, to twist him into something that no one who knew him back in Clearcreek could ever have imagined. 

And—big enough to shape Whit. He’d been just a boy, with a mouth too smart for his own good, when he joined her crew at Pearl Riffle. But the river had taught him how to work—not because his papa told him to, but because he’d said he would, or because the work needed doing. He was a good sweep, now, and coming along well on the steering oar, too. He learned as quickly as Fawn did.

Besides, his smile brightened the journey.

“It’s big, all right,” Berry said. 

They walked on. 

After a time, Whit stopped, setting the shoes down carefully, and picked up a shell so big it was longer than his hand. It was narrow and pointed at one end, and flared into a wide spiral at the other, worked all around with delicate brown stripes. 

“What do you think you’ll do next?” he asked, testing the spike at the center of the shell’s broad end against the tip of his finger. “Once you’ve gone back north.”

“Same as last year.” Berry gazed out at the horizon, where one kind of blue-gray butted up against another. “Bo and Hawthorn and I’ll build a flatboat, and float it back down here on the fall rise.” She swung back around, and caught Whit looking wistful.

Well, so was she.

She would miss Fawn something fierce, and Dag, and even the patroller boys. But why had she never noticed it was Whit she would miss the most?

“I don’t know if you know where _you’ll_ be, come fall.” Berry pushed a hank of hair back behind her ear, and the wind from the sea blew it right back across her face again. “But if you want a place on my boat, you can have it. Anytime.”

Whit drew himself up, lips in a tight, determined line. “Berry.”

Something in his eyes made her remember the feel of his arms holding her close, that horrid day on the Elbow. Then, it had been a great comfort, warmth against the ice in her heart.

Now, the memory was warming her in an entirely different way. Making her restless.

Did she _love_ Whit?

A moment’s thought established that she certainly did want to kiss him.

How could this be? It was Alder she had loved, wasn’t it?

Wasn’t it?

She had known Alder all her life, and somehow she had always figured she would marry him. Papa had encouraged the idea, maybe; Alder’s family had good land, right along the river.

So _was_ that love? Or was it just habit, and friendship, and the excitement of knowing that one day she would grow up and start her own household?

She finally had grown up, too, faster than Alder. That was one reason why Papa had wanted to take him down the river—oh, gods, if only Alder had stayed in Clearcreek, with her...

Unless— 

What if the river _hadn’t_ warped him? What if it had merely grown him up into the man he was already cut out to become?

An Alder who stayed behind in Clearcreek wouldn’t have stolen, surely. Wouldn’t have joined up with bandits and lured unsuspecting rivermen to their deaths. But would he have been a man who looked out for himself first, who didn’t hesitate to spin a lie if it got him out of a tight spot? Whose heart was secretly capable of betraying her own kin to save himself?

Berry let out a long breath, and met Whit’s dark eyes straight on.

The man that the river was finding in _this_ boy was someone she wanted on her crew. By her side.

All her life.

~ _fin_ ~

* * *

  
_We never know the worth of water till the well is dry._  
—Thomas Fuller, _Gnomologia_ (1732)


End file.
